Legislators need a better understanding of the test for strong funding of higher education.

One need only review what Stanford University is doing in the way of fund-raising to recognize what a tremendous task state-supported schools such as Kansas University face.

Stanford, a private school in California, has set a goal of $1 billion and already has raised $750 million, or three-fourths, of that total. It’s not that the money is flowing in with ease. The school, its officials, alumni and students are having to work hard.

But the campaign, three years in the planning, is moving along handsomely. It is easy to see why other universities struggle and battle and labor so hard to make ends meet in the face of such competition. Then when schools such as KU have some success in raising private funds, legislators tend to take the approach they do not need as much public money.

What so often is overlooked by lawmakers, including those in the most recent session of the Kansas Legislature, is that the privately raised money is supposed to augment what the state provides. It often cannot be used to do what state funds must.

To raise its whopping $1 billion, Stanford is working to contact some 185,000 living alumni. Five couples donated $429 million to jump-start the campaign and the evidence is that the final quota will be achieved in a five-year period.

One sees such campaigns and how they move along so well at places such as Stanford, Harvard, Yale and Princeton and has to admire even more the great job a school such as Kansas University does each year.

The heavily endowed private schools build high-altitude mountains for others to see and aspire to climb. That serves a good purpose.

But when schools such as KU, Kansas State and other go out and match up well in the private funding field, they should not be penalized by lawmakers who are too shortsighted to see the challenges they also should meet.